From the Paper:

"The practices of different forms of meditation have been used for centuries in attempts to accomplish different goals. One of these goals is the reduction of anxiety (Kuna 1975). This study will attempt to assess the differences in the effectiveness of meditation on the reduction of anxiety between short and long term applications. The meditative therapies used in the study will be Zen or Chan meditation, which uses belly breathing and counting to induce relaxation and focus. One group will use the meditation for a period of one week, 30 minutes a day, while the other will do the same amount each day, but for 10 weeks. To determine the levels of anxiety felt in the participants, an anxiety inventory will be administered, both before and following the meditation. The inventory will be the Stait-Trait Anxiety Inventory, which was used by Denberry in 1982 in his study of anxiety in geriatric patients. This will be used to determine the difference between anxiety levels in participants depending upon the length of time the meditation was used.
"Studies conducted in the past have shown different results for the effectiveness of meditation on anxiety reduction. In 2009, an experiment conducted on 28 Japanese cancer patients showed a significant decrease in anxiety after the participants used Zen meditation regularly for two weeks, which led the researchers to conclude that the practice is effective (Ando, Morita, Akechi, Ito, Tanaka, Ifuku, & Nakayama). However, an early experiment conducted by Goldman, Dormitor, and Murray showed no significant change in the levels of anxiety in their participants, leading them to conclude that meditation is not effective in reducing anxiety (1979). Like the Japanese cancer patient study, Zen meditation was used, however it was used for only one week instead of two and was not used on patients (Goldman, Dormitor, & Murray, 1979).
"Then, more disagreements on the effectiveness of meditation on anxiety reduction have been found in analyses of other studies. In 1985, Delmonte and Vincent performed an overview of various studies and concluded that they did not show that meditation was effective as a therapy because the people who used it were generally psychologically healthy, whereas psychologically unhealthy individuals tended to not use it. Kuna's research in 1975, however, argued that studies showed that not only did meditation (transcendental in the case) successfully reduce levels of anxiety, but prolonged use of the techniques would build a barrier to future anxiety. Kuna's research showed that people suffering from anxiety did indeed seek meditation as a method for anxiety reduction (1975)."

Cite this Article Review:

APA Format

The Effect of Meditation on Anxiety (2014, November 06)
Retrieved November 19, 2018, from https://www.academon.com/article-review/the-effect-of-meditation-on-anxiety-154066/